Chapter Text
Baz
“But that doesn’t make any sense, Penny,” Snow says as he and Bunce enter the dining hall. “Why would there be stipulations? A tooth is a tooth, yeah? Why wouldn’t she want mine?”
They make it to the dinner queue where Bunce takes a plate for herself and hands another to Snow. “He,” she corrects.
“Huh?”
“He. The current tooth fairy is a he.”
“Oh.”
They’re across the room from me (though I can hear them perfectly—the super part of my superhuman abilities, I suppose), but I can still see his face go all scrunchy and bulldog-ish as he contemplates the Tooth Fairy's pronouns while piling fourteen helpings of Sunday roast on a plate made for one.
“That’s…” He fits a whole Yorkshire pudding in his mouth.
“Surprising?” Bunce says.
Snow swallows, possibly without chewing. "Kind of cool, actually.”
They plunk down at their regular spot, a table not far from mine. I’ve heard Snow tell Bunce time and time again that he has to keep me within his line of sight so he can keep tabs on me. Because he’s a villain, he says. Because he’s a vampire.
The simpleton.
“Feels weird,” Snow says now, “chewing without one of my front teeth.”
Sounds a bit weird, too. He got the left front tooth knocked out on one of the Mage’s ridiculous missions. (Fighting off a grift horse, I heard.) (Those things will fuck you over. A grift horse can, quite literally, charm the pants right off you if you look it in the mouth.) Now, he’s got a gap in his smile and a hint of a lisp that shouldn’t be endearing.
“What did the Mage say about going to the dentist?” Bunce asks.
Snow shrugs. “Didn’t say a thing.”
“How does he expect you to get it fixed?”
“Dunno. This might just be how I look now. You sure you don’t want to give it a go?” He juts his chin and bares his teeth at her.
“I already told you,” Bunces says, pushing Snow gently away, “dental spells are really challenging. Mum told me about a whole Watford class whose teeth crumbled right out of their heads with a misplaced Our teeth and ambitions are bared! in the late 90s.”
Snow pouts as he shovels food into his mouth. “I could at least be compensated for it,” he mumbles through a mouthful. “Why won’t the Tooth Fairy take my tooth?”
“I don’t know, Simon. Milk teeth are a different shape and size than permanent teeth. Maybe it’s something to do with that?”
His blue eyes go steely with determination. It is unbearably attractive. “I’m going to try,” he says, licking at a trail of gravy that’s dribbling from his hand down his forearm, which is also unbearably attractive. (Unfortunately.) “I mean, it doesn’t hurt to try, right?”
Bunce sighs. It’s a longsuffering thing. The idiocy she puts up with on a daily basis. But she’s being so patient with Snow. She always is, but especially since Wellbelove broke things off with him. “Who knows,” she says. “Maybe you’ll prove me wrong.”
"When you put it that way..." Snow says, and they both laugh.
Bunce is right, of course. She usually is.
I can’t accept adult teeth.